The Breakfast Club: 60s Rock Band Edition
by bratpackfilmfan
Summary: FIRST CHAPTER NOW UP A chronicle of the Breakfast Club as if they were a 1960s band on par with the Beatles; revolutionary and groundbreaking.
1. The Members

The Breakfast Club re-imagined as the 1960s' most influential music act. Most of their story is basically the Beatles' re-written. Something in me just imagined them as a rock band, so I'm gonna write this story. The events in this story take place from 1961 to 1969.

 **Characters**

 **John Bender: vocalist and lead guitarist.** Bender was born in Shermer, Illinois on November 13, 1942. He was brought up in an abusive household. His father would constantly physically and verbally abuse him under the influence of alcohol. Bender escaped home at age sixteen following the formation of the band that would become the genesis of the Breakfast Club, a rock and roll group called John Bender & The Criminals, in 1958, although they occasionally preformed as Alec Newbury & The Extracurricular Love Life (an astronomically long name for 1958 standards) to avoid confusion with another Criminals band in the same town. After the Criminals disbanded in 1961, he met two other students, Allison Reynolds and Brian Johnson, who were in a detention together and busked in the streets after finding an interest in music. Bender quickly reformed the Criminals, adding one of his older bandmates, Keith Nelson, as the rhythm guitarist. Nelson left in 1962 after choosing to pursue a chick in his class he liked.

 **Andrew Clark: rhythm guitarist.** Clark was born on January 22, 1943 in Shermer, Illinois. He took up guitar in 1958 to rebel against his father who wanted him to become a state champion wrestler in high school after hearing Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. He played in various Shermer bands throughout 1959 to 1962 when he met Allison Reynolds at a Criminals gig backstage. Reynolds introduced him to Bender and Johnson, as they were looking for a replacement rhythm guitarist and Clark had told Reynolds he played that.

 **Brian Johnson: bassist.** Johnson was born on June 19, 1943 in Shermer, Illinois. He began playing electric bass at 14 and became somewhat notable as he was the only local who ever played one at a point. He and Allison Reynolds had met via a Saturday detention in 1959, and shared interests with her in rock and roll. Soon, the two began busking in the Shermer streets, with Allison on tambourine and Brian on acoustic guitar. Bender met them via their busking just outside Shermer High in 1961.

 **Allison Reynolds, drummer.** Reynolds was born on March 13, 1943 in Shermer, Illinois. Reynolds would describe her childhood as being very empty, with her parents almost completely ignoring her, which led her to become what she would dub a 'basket case'; doing outrageous, spastic things to get the attention she was lacking. After the detention in which she met Johnson, she began opening herself up to the world. Reynolds dealt with depression during her earlier years, going as far as to overdose on sedatives in 1966, but she recovered and has focused on poetry since the band's dissolution.

 **Claire Standish, keyboardist.** Standish was born on August 19, 1943 in Shermer, Illinois. After World War II, her family profited in the economic boom and became raised in an upper-class manner, which led to her uncompromising popular girl attitude in school. That changed after meeting the Criminals in 1962, where she started by helping the band carry their equipment, to becoming full-time as their keyboardist, on an electric piano. She also became fascinated in the art of tape manipulation and formed a bond with Reynolds over it, which also led to a songwriting partnership. She also handled the band's finances due to their being managerless throughout most of their career, although they were briefly managed by John Hughes until he left to manage another Shermer band in 1963.

The Breakfast Club formed as they were in 1961, and Standish joined in mid 1962. Their first recordings were with rock and roll singer Ferris Bueller in December 1961, which were released in January 1962. The Breakfast Club released their first recordings as themselves in October 1962 and their first album came out in February 1963. They disbanded in December 1969 intentionally to end themselves along with the 1960s.

Next chapter will chronicle 1961.


	2. 1961

**August, 1961**

John Bender, Allison Reynolds, Brian Johnson and Keith Nelson are John Bender & The Criminals, a rock and roll band taking Shermer, Illinois and later most of the Chicago area by storm. They were the first known rock and roll band in the area to have a female member. Bender plays lead guitar and vocals, Ally plays the drums, Brian plays the bass and Keith plays rhythm guitar. The history of the Criminals goes long back.

Bender formed the Criminals in 1958 at age 16 to escape from his abusive father by non-stop touring. He was a troublemaker who would often use his wrongdoing as an outlet for his frustrations. Rock music changed this. Bender finally found a way to channel his anger and enjoy himself, twanging away on his Stratocaster to Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly covers, as well as the increasing amount of originals he and his bandmates concocted.

Reynolds and Johnson weren't part of the original lineup. They joined when Bender dissolved the original Criminals, causing him to reform the band. The two met in a Saturday detention in March 1959 and often busked in the streets for money, where Bender came across them in 1961, dropping a few coins in their bucket and offering them a spot in his band.

That hot August afternoon in 1961 changed everything. Ally and Brian were singing 'Will You Love Me Tommorrow' by the Shirelles, which was a big hit earlier in the year. Their rock-influenced rendition attracted Bender, who was in the streets pickpocketing people. He liked what they were doing, waited until they were finished, and walked up, throwing all the coins he took into their money bucket.

"Hey, you guys weren't that bad.", Bender says, seemingly nonchalantly but actually meaning it.

Brian and Ally looked up very brightfully and thanked him. "Thank you!", Brian stuttered.

Bender said, "No worries. You know I recently called off a rock band of mine and I'm thinking of getting it back together again and it just so happened that you guys seem to be exactly...who I need, ya know? We need a drummer and a bassist.".

Brian and Ally looked at each other. They had always wanted to be in a band, but didn't expect an opportunity to come so out of nowhere and unexpectedly. Nevertheless, they accepted. Ally agreed. "I do play drums."

"Alright, I play a bit of bass.", Brian too agreed. "Where do we meet you at?", Ally asked.

Bender told them; the second floor of the local pizza joint, which was Benders' apartment, any time today or tomorrow. Brian chose to go then and there, however. As they entered Bender's apartment, they found Keith Nelson practicing on his guitar. He was one of Bender's old bandmates from the original Criminals, the only one who chose to return. Bender tells him, "I think we found the rest of the band, Keith. They're right here.".

Ally and Brian looked quite soft and tame with their tambourine and acoustic guitar, like folk hippies before they existed, but deep down inside was a rock and roll spirit. Keith saw that. Bender pointed to a drum kit and a bass guitar. "Those were from the older band, but they're yours now.", he said. The two immediately raced to their respective instruments and began blasting Will You Love Me Tomorrow in their rocking rendition. Keith and John just picked up their guitars, began riffing and they became a pretty tight band.

Once the jam wound down, they all knew they were the perfect band. Keith brought up a valid point however; they needed a new band to avoid any run-ins with their older bandmates. So they sat in a circle and decided. They decided on several names, The Caterpillars, The Basket Cases, The Kleptomaniacs, The Brains, The Dead Hearts, The War Games, The Short Circuits, The Sedatives, Safety Spectacles, and even The St. Elmos Bar Band, before settling on The Breakfast Club.

Bender had an idea when Brian began discussing about the detention which brought he and Ally together. The detention took place at breakfast and the fact they gathered together at the exact same time, like a club. Therefore, The Breakfast Club. He found it a perfect name.

 **September, 1961**

After a few weeks of practice, they debuted live at the Shermer High School gymnasium as the Breakfast Club on September 29, 1961. Their set included September In The Rain, (fitting considering the month), Shake, Rattle and Roll, and a few originals such as Cha Cha Rock-A-Rolla and Love Comes At A Price. Bender looked pretty conventional; think of Alec from St. Elmos Fire. This was exactly how he looked like on stage. Suit, short and combed hair. With a Stratocaster. Brian and Keith also looked pretty conventional for the time with their short hair. Allison's style however was very weird.

She wore a big black parka with a gray scarf and an ankle-length gray patterned skirt, and had a messy shoulder-length head of chestnut colored hair with bangs covering her eyes almost. She did not fit in with anything else. All of the other high school girls looked like Connie Francis ripoffs, appropriate since the movie Where The Boys At was still quite a massive craze over a year after it's release there. Her style would even make the counterculture that was to come within five years weirded out. She looked like a goth.

She did not look like the type of girl to be playing drums to a love song like September In The Rain. She looked like the type to be in 1984 and listen to the Smiths and the Cure. For 1961, Ally's style was quite otherworldly. She would keep this style for as long as the band existed, and would lead to them adopting nicknames for each other's high school stereotypes.

The audience consisted of most of the school as well as people the band's age that just finished school. There was Stubby, a buddy of Benders' from the Criminals in the late 50s, Kevin Dolenz and Billy Hicks who traveled all the way from Georgetown University just to see a rock and roll band for once and wound up there, Ferris Bueller, an up and coming guitarist/singer playing some of the loudest rock at the time, and a few others, Phillip "Duckie" Dale, Blane McDonough (who looked awfully like Kevin Dolenz) and Hardy Jenns.

Bender's voice roared through the tiny PA speakers. "SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL! I SAID SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL!" he howled, each Shake, Rattle and Roll getting more intense. It made John Lennon's screaming on Twist And Shout sound like the harmonies on 'Because' or 'Sun King'. The band were quite intense for 1961. Bender had his small ass Fender tweed amp cranked at highest level to the point where it clipped, creating a really mean sounding distortion. Brian had to do the same for his bass, which literally shook the gymnasium until cracks started appearing on the polished wooden floor.

The Breakfast Club finish their set with a new song they had wrote. "Don't You Forget About Me". The song, played in the trademark 60s/Beatles "Boom-dum-dum-boom-dum-dum" drum beat, had pretty advanced lyrics for the time. It was out of this world for a 1961 rock song. Most songs around this time were 12-bar blues or beat influenced. The song felt symbolic to the band as it felt like they were telling each other to never ever forget about them and the bond they created.

The roar of applause was quite astonishing. Nobody had ever heard anything like them before. They were conventional in some parts but in others not.

 **October, 1961**

The Breakfast Club played a very long string of gigs at Shermer High and outside, such as at the Leslie Hunter Auditorium just outside Shermer on October 9, 1961. The amount of gigs, although it was making them money, was beginning to exhaust them. Ally fell asleep during a gig at Sharpey's Club on October 14, and the band called a gig off early due to being way too tired at Maine South High School on October 16th. They found a good opportunity to get off the road when Ferris approached them in late October. He hedd followed the Club around, becoming a massive fan of their music, and asked them if they could be his backing band on an album. Seeing a chance to actually perfect their ways in a recording studio, the band immediately agreed. They decided to arrange a meeting in order to get to know him better beforehand.

October 27, 1961, the band gather at Ally's house with Ferris in her living room. The four band members discussed it out with him.

Ferris: So guys, I was thinking that you could back me on an album I wanna make. You guys play the exact same music that I do and you're the only band that does.

Bender: You sure you want us? We've only been a band for like a month.

Ferris: Yes, you guys are cool.

Bender: I mean, you can join the band completely, that is if you want to.

Ferris: Nah, I would much prefer my name be on the title, like 'Ferris Bueller & The Breakfast Club', or something like that.

Bender: You would much prefer your name? Come on, that makes you sound like you're full of yourself.

Ferris: I'm not trying to be full of myself, the album is meant to be a solo album with a backing band...

Keith: We'll do that, it's just the way you put it that sounded off.

Ferris: Didn't mean to, sorry.

Ally: You're making a solo album, but you also want to credit us, a band, as 'Ferris Bueller & The Breakfast Club'? It makes you sound like you're part of the band when you're trying to be solo.

Ferris: A lot of people do that, though.

Brian: It would be...ya know...a bit more convincing if the album says "Ferris Bueller, backed by the Breakfast Club" or something like that.

Ferris: I wanted us to be equal in this, that's all I was trying to say.

Ally: We're not trying to shut down your idea it's just that people might think you're part of the band and it might screw your solo career.

Bender: You want a solo career, right? It's gonna have to be Big Bry's idea then. 'Ferris Bueller backed by the Breakfast Club'. It'd stick you out from us like you want.

Ferris: ...you know I guess you're right.

Ally: It's all a part of negotiating. There's bound to be disagreements. It's unavoidable, it just happens.

Bender: Hey Ferris, the deal's still on, OK? You're gonna record the album with us.

Ferris: Alright, cool. When do you wanna do it?

Keith: We gotta rehearse with you first, have you provide the material you've got, we'll practice it, then once it's good enough we'll head down to the studio and thrash it out hopefully in one hit.

Ferris: Done deal.

Bender and Ferris shake hands and the 'meeting' is called off.

 **November, 1961**

The Club and Ferris have spent most of November rehearsing. Ferris had a slew of material he wrote for the album, including "Oh Samantha Pringle", "Down In The Goon Docks With You", "Driving Guitars", "Help Me", "Another Man In Your Window", "Swashbuckler Blues" and a few others. The Club themselves get their own track, "Cha Cha Rocka Rolla". The title was influenced by the 1956 film Cha-Cha-Cha-Boom!, which Bender saw on a marquee.

The gang convene at Hughes Studios, a local recording studio just north of Shermer, owned by a man named John Hughes. He was a quiet man, kinda reclusive. However, he was a nice guy. He took the control room for the sessions.

Ferris and the Club laid down all of the tracks in a single hour-long session, no second take required. Everything done live on two-track tape, folded down to mono. However, Hughes was instructed to keep the original stereo master to release as well.

Hughes Studios was pretty clean and straightforward. There was a big live room and a control room. One mic for each instrument. Ally's kit was recorded with one overhead. Bender, Brian and Ferris's guitars were recorded with one microphone together. Ferris's (and John's for Cha Cha) vocals were done with another one. All in all, the entire band was recorded on three microphones, a pretty simple setup but it showed up very well in the mix.

"Driving Guitars, take one.", Hughes mutters into the talkback. With a 1, 2, 3, 4, the band bursts into some of the dirtiest rock ever recorded at the time. Guitars overdriven up the wazoo, Ally furiously banging the drums harder than any male rock drummer at the time tried to. John and Ferris do a guitar solo standoff with a sinister backbeat. It was very heavy for it's time.

The time comes for John to take lead vocals on Cha Cha Rocka Rolla, and he screams. Think of John Lennon's primal screaming on Mother, what Bender was doing here was just as intense. "CHA CHA CHA CHA CHA CHA ROCKA ROLLA BABE! OH YOU ARE ROCKIN' ME BAD!", the first two lines went. It was quite daring as the lyrics went on, with increasing sexual innuendos and double entendres.

The session was done in one hit, and then the band were free to go.

Ally: That was so awesome! I wanna do that again!

Bender: Just gotta hope the album sells.

The band convene back at Ally's house and play the tapes back for another good review in her living room. Her father, who had lacquer hanging around, inspires Ally. She was an arts and crafts girl, so she knew her trade here. "What are you doing?", Bender asks when she grabs out a tin of lacquer. "You'll see.", Ally says.

She finds a cake ring from the kitchen, a plate, and a little record hole sized screw to make a hole, and pours a thin layer of the lacquer into it. She then put the concoction in an oven, turned it to it's hottest level, and waited for the lacquer to cure; nobody hardens lacquer via an oven and it usually takes 24 hours or more to do so but Ally's basket-case ways threw realism out the window. Five minutes later, she takes it out of the oven and takes the cake ring off, and the lacquer is a nice fine disc.

Ally then walks back into the living room with her homemade lacquer disc, connects a needle to a speaker connected to the tape machine, plays the tape, spins the disc on a record player, and puts the needle on. When she's finished, she turns around to the band with what she just made, a homemade acetate of the album.

"Wait, you just cut the album...yourself?", Brian stutters in shock.

Ally with her manic smile nods. "Oh yeah. It's to play to our friends before the album comes out, like a sneak peek of what they're getting.".

Bender, who almost never compliments anybody, simply says, "That was clever."

Keith: "Woah."

They play a ton of gigs throughout November without Ferris (who chose not to tour to make it a surprise that he and the band collabed) including more dates at the Leslie Hunter Auditorium, which they would pretty much have a residency in. Their schedule becomes increasingly bigger in anticipation of the album's release, and at the end of every gig they promote it. "We're putting out an album with Ferris Bueller, probably some time in December.", Bender said once on stage.

 **December, 1961**

The album finally released in late December. 'Ferris Bueller And The Breakfast Club' was released on December 18, 1961 to positive reviews. The album's wide release was why. It was released in most of the US and Canada, and later released in the UK and Australia a day later. The other three countries were chosen by the band, because they felt they would be the most receptive.

They sure were. The album was mostly positively reviewed. One music paper said, "'Ferris Bueller And The Breakfast Club' is a very neat effort by five locals from Shermer, Illinois. It's a very dirty, daring piece of work that will appeal well to the youth and possibly inspire others to go down the same path. This album is definitely a groundbreaker.".

By the end of the year, it had sold 200,000 copies in those four countries, and anticipation was rising for another album from either Ferris or the Club. They parted ways with Ferris after the release, and he would join his own band, The 15 Feet Jump in 1964 who would become pretty integral to the creation of psychedelic rock by 1966.

The Club would start to gain national attention. By the beginning of 1962, the album sold 600,000 copies, one of which was bought by a few certain Liverpudlians. Australia wound up being where the most copies of the album sold, accounting for 41% of the sales worldwide.

As a result, the Breakfast Club would now have to embark on a tour throughout the four countries. Needless to say, a lot will happen in the six months this tour is going to take place for. There's a few dates for the US and Canada, but on December 30, 1961, they would buckle up to take on the land of down under.

1962 is going to follow suit after this. Stay tuned.


End file.
